


Sheathed in Broken Skin

by Mildredo



Category: Glee
Genre: Blangst, Cutting, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mildredo/pseuds/Mildredo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The numbers keep dropping but the boy in the mirror doesn’t look any thinner. He gets bigger as the numbers get smaller. He doesn’t know which is reality any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sheathed in Broken Skin

It’s easy.

It’s too easy. He hasn’t lost much yet, and what he has lost isn’t noticeable under his clothes. He has some bulkier sweater vests and cardigans on standby for when it is. He hopes it’s soon.

Breakfast and dinner are the easiest. He pretends to be asleep against his mom’s calls until five minutes before he has to leave for school, and when she chastises him for not getting up earlier and eating some cereal or toast, he tells her that he’ll grab something before homeroom and rushes out the door. In the evening, he’ll push his food around the plate a bit. He drinks his water and when no one’s looking, he slips the meat and some of the potatoes into his pockets to throw away. He eventually excuses himself, saying that he had a big lunch and he’s not really hungry.

He didn’t and he is.

Lunchtime is more difficult. It’s open and public. He has to sit in a giant hall full of people and just the smell of food in the air makes him feel sick. He forces down an apple, choking on every bite, and spends the afternoon willing himself not to go to the bathroom and throw it up.

He manages most days.

He sits at the back of his classrooms. He’s always been a front half of the room kind of student, but it’s become harder and harder to concentrate in class and it’s easier to hide the fact that he can’t pay attention if he’s huddled up in the back row. Sometimes, he naps. It’s not really sleeping. It’s more like zoning out while staring at the wall, counting the pores in the painted brick, but it’s the closest thing he gets to sleep. His grades are dropping, and the first time he gets a test back with a big, red ‘D’ at the top, he’s advised to go and talk to Miss Pillsbury.

He doesn’t go.

He doesn’t sing in Glee club any more. It should be his respite, his safe place. It should be the place where someone notices that something’s wrong, but no one does. He sits in the back corner of the room, with his bag clutched against his stomach to stifle the sound of it growling, but the noise is usually lost under someone singing. He silently wills someone, anyone in the damn club to look at him and wonder. Wonder why he isn’t singing melancholic solos about Kurt, wonder why he isn’t trying to get everyone pumped for sectionals, wonder why he isn’t leading when he’s supposed to be the successor to Rachel Berry.

He wants one of the faculty to wonder why the senior class president hasn’t been to the last three student council meetings. Sam must be really good at making excuses for him.  
When he goes home, he stands on the bathroom scales and stares at the numbers. He takes off all his clothes and stands there naked to take off any extra pounds added by his jeans and sweaters. It’s always too high; it’s never fast enough. He doesn’t know exactly what weight he was before but he doesn’t feel like he’s losing it quickly enough. When he first stood on these scales, just to see if he’d lost weight since the break up, he found himself wondering if he could turn those three digits into two. It’s been his goal ever since.  
This isn’t the first time he’s done this, but it’s the first time he’s sustained it. He refused to eat in hospital after Sadie Hawkins, but after two days, the doctors threatened to feed him through a tube and make him see a shrink, and that was enough to scare him into eating enough to keep them happy. He’s used it as a way to punish himself. If he got a bad grade or failed a test or sung a bum note in rehearsal, he wouldn’t eat for the rest of the day. When the Warblers lost at regionals, he didn’t eat for two whole days. It would have been longer, and he didn’t feel sufficiently punished, but he and Kurt were going for their first official date and he had to eat at the restaurant so Kurt didn’t worry.

It was easier at Dalton, because he failed more often. The classes were harder and the competition steeper. At McKinley, he’s been top of all of his classes since the beginning. There’s been no failure so there’s been no excuses, until he screwed up bigger than he has ever screwed up, and there’s been excuses ever since.

He looks at himself naked in the bathroom mirror. It’s almost full length and he can see everything. There’s still too much of him. He doesn’t look like he wants to look yet. He doesn’t really know how he wants to look, but it’s not this. He wants to look like he deserves. He wants to fade away. His stomach is still too chubby. His arms are too big. His fingers are like sausages. He runs his hands flat over himself, over jutting hipbones that aren’t sharp enough and onto his ribs. He splays his fingers and tries to press them into the dents. Not yet. Not thin enough yet.

He hasn’t slept properly in a long time. He keeps a stash of low-calorie energy drinks in his room and he drinks them while playing video games with the sound off all night. He gets a triple espresso at the Lima Bean if he leaves for school early enough, and he always spends too long staring at the menu, lusting after drinks he’ll never purchase. He’d really like a pumpkin spice latte with full fat milk and extra whipped cream, but the espresso will do. It keeps him somewhat awake.

He’s too tired to drive. He shouldn’t be driving to school and back, but he has no choice. Everything has to remain normal to his parents. They’re distant enough to have not noticed yet, but close enough that they’ll realize if he starts asking for rides to school. He’s nearly had an accident more than once and he sometimes drifts onto the rumble strips without noticing. One day, the cops are going to pull him, thinking he’s drunk driving, and the whole game will be over.

It feels like a game, in a way. Not in the sense that it’s fun. But it has goals, it has missions, it has achievements to unlock. He can’t help but feel accomplished when nobody notices that he hasn’t eaten lunch for the fourth day running. He can’t help but hear an ‘achievement unlocked’ ding in his head when someone mentions in passing that he looks a little slimmer in the face.

Maybe he’s just spent too many nights playing video games.

The numbers keep dropping but the boy in the mirror doesn’t look any thinner. He gets bigger as the numbers get smaller. He doesn’t know which is reality any more.

He spends a lot of time on the internet. There are people like him there. People who share their goals and tips and daily caloric intakes. He doesn’t join in, but he takes comfort in knowing he’s not the only one grasping for control, clinging onto anything that makes everything feel a tiny bit more stable. There are pictures of beautiful people – they’re mostly girls. He doesn’t want to look at girls, and eventually he finds some boys to look at. Arty black and white shots of pale boys with curved backs showing prominent vertebrae, boys with hipbones and ribcages and collarbones and concave tummies. He prints a couple out to keep and look at when it gets too hard.

Everything aches. His whole body feels like it’s moving through sludge. Standing up makes him dizzy and walking for too long leaves him out of breath. His head constantly hurts and he still hasn’t slept a full night. When he does sleep for a little while, he has strange, terrifying dreams and he wakes in a cold sweat, his heart beating loudly and even visibly, a little bump under his left collarbone moving up and down in time with the throbbing in his ears.

Nobody notices.

He barely gets through Grease. He’s so terrified of passing out on stage that he makes himself eat a bowl of pasta beforehand. Singing on stage again feels good. He’s missed the adrenaline rush. The applause felt like coming home after a long vacation. But when his scene ends, he rushes to the bathroom to get the pasta out of his stomach. His gag reflex is unresponsive and he eventually gives up - he knew that his former insistence on learning to deepthroat would come back to bite him in the ass. He can feel himself bloating, expanding, absorbing calories he doesn’t want to have inside him.

He sees Kurt after the show and it’s the first time since New York. He’s with Rachel, chatting with Mercedes and Sugar, but he keeps glancing over to Blaine with his brow knitted into a frown. Blaine wants to get up and remind him that frowning like that will give him premature wrinkles. Instead, he gets up and goes home before anyone even suggests that they all go to Breadstix.

He’s sure the numbers have gone up since he ate the pasta, but he can’t remember what they were that morning so he just assumes that they have. In the mirror, he looks bigger. His stomach looks rounder. He shouldn’t have eaten so much. He shouldn’t have eaten.

He drinks his way quickly through two large bottles of water and they make him feel sick enough to vomit. It’s mostly water, acid, and the last few, undigested pieces of pasta, but it’s enough that he can go to bed feeling a tiny bit better about himself.

He doesn’t eat a single thing for three days to make up for it, and he doesn’t pass out on stage. He’s constantly scared that he’ll trip on the steps while he’s singing, and it’s sheer willpower that keeps him upright. He hears himself sing a few wrong notes but he doubts anyone noticed. Nobody notices.

On closing night, he doesn’t go out for the curtain call. He’s been sat in a chair in the choir room since Beauty School Dropout ended and he doesn’t have the energy to move. The room is spinning around him and when someone, he’s not sure who, asks if he’s coming, he waves them off with a mumbled “in a minute.”

He isn’t sure if he fell asleep or fainted when he wakes up, but he’s on the floor of the choir room, his cheek pressed against his knuckles. Someone has put him in the recovery position and the voices around him are hushed. He really hopes they haven’t called an ambulance. He starts to sit up and the room spins some more. Someone hooks their arms under his as he begins to fall backwards and they help him into a chair.

“Just haven’t had time to eat for a couple days,” he lies as someone else passes him a Gatorade. Everything feels fuzzy and he can’t work out how to move his legs for a little while. Sam drives him home in his car, and Sugar follows in hers so she can take Sam back to continue celebrating.

When he gets home, his parents are at a dinner party. It’s an important business thing, so the note on the coffee table says. He feels so weak from fainting, so tired, and he walks to the kitchen like it’s his Mecca. He could eat. He has to eat or people will start to get suspicious. He hasn’t hidden it well enough. He’s already a failure and his punishment isn’t enough. If he’s going to be a failure then who cares if he eats until he’s the size of his house?

He eats three bags of chips, an entire sponge cake, eight slices of toast with Nutella, a packet of chocolate chip cookies, a grilled cheese, and two packs of Oreos with glasses of half-and-half. He hates himself for every mouthful and spends the rest of the night crying, clutching his aching stomach and willing himself not to go into the bathroom and weigh himself then throw it all up and try again.

He manages to keep it down, but the next day the boy in the mirror looks like the morbidly obese people he’s seen riding electric scooters around the grocery store, and he only eats an apple all day.

He wishes he could exercise, but just walking around is almost too much most of the time. He misses dancing around his room to Katy Perry or Roxy Music or Pink. He misses boxing. He barely has enough energy to lift his arm, let alone throw a punch. He can see his muscle disappearing, especially in his chest, and it’s being replaced with soft, squishy flesh. It’s too soft and squishy, and he pulls and prods at it so hard that he leaves round, white finger marks on the skin. He wants it to go. He wants to slice it off and then slice all the other bits of himself off until he’s thin. He wants to slice off the sides of his chubby thighs and slice off his stomach fat and slice off his flabby butt. He wants to slice bits off until he’s nothing but a bloody skeleton.

He can’t get the image out of his head. He knows he can’t cut off chunks of his body, but the idea of blood seems appealing somehow.

He turns the army knife over in his hand. His grandfather gave it to him when he was a Boy Scout, and it’s never been used. He pops out several of the blades and attachments, just to look at them. He finds it amazing how so many gadgets can be housed in one little object. It has everything needed to survive in the wild and yet he knows it could kill him with one wrong stroke. He takes the knife into the bathroom and he strips off and weighs himself again. Slowly dropping again. Slowly. Nowhere near the two digits, but nearer than he was. The mirror boy is still huge. His fingers still don’t fit into the ridges on his chest. His ass is still too big.

He flicks out the thinnest, sharpest blade and draws it in a long line from the side of his butt cheek, all the way down his thigh to his knee. It’s not a deep cut, but it stings before it turns warm and achy. Blood trickles down his lower leg and pools on the hardwood floor beside his foot. He watches it until the bleeding stops itself and he turns around to look at it in the mirror. His leg is bloody and swollen around the cut, but it feels good. It’s the same adrenaline rush he gets on stage, but it’s better without an auditorium full of people staring at him.

He cleans the blood off his leg and the floor and puts his clothes back on. He can feel the ache of it every time he moves and he likes it. It’s a reminder that he can still feel something, that he’s still alive.

He needs that.

The winter drawing in means that he can wear bigger sweaters. It’s finally cold enough that no one will think it strange. He eats a little more fruit at school so he doesn’t pass out again, and he starts working hard to get his grades back up before the end of the year. Studying provides a distraction from the constant stomach pains. He drinks more water and black coffee and he manages to find the energy to sing a solo in Glee club at least once a week. He goes to student council meetings and makes valid points. If anyone had any suspicions, he’s trying exceedingly hard to avert them.

He goes home exhausted from the effort of hiding it.

Underneath his oversized winter apparel, he’s skinnier than ever and covered in cuts. Fresh ones are covered with Band-Aids so they don’t bleed through his clothes, and they all itch like mad. Some are scarring already. He likes the scars. They look like constellations sprinkled across his skin, little reminders of the star he used to be.

At Thanksgiving, he’s mostly thankful that his parents decided to go and visit Cooper in California, but he managed to use schoolwork he doesn’t have as an excuse to stay home alone. The thought of being forced to participate in the gluttony of the holiday scares him too much.

He treats himself to a Thanksgiving dinner of two apples and a glass of nonfat milk, and spends the evening staring at his growing collection of printed photos of beautiful, skinny boys. He doesn’t have much of a libido left, but he manages to jerk off while looking at them. He imagines being pressed against a bony spine, or having a hard ribcage digging into his back. He reaches around to finger himself and he imagines jutting hipbones smacking hard into his ass cheeks on every thrust, imagines biting down on a collarbone as he comes and having only a thin piece of skin separating his teeth from the bone.

It’s the first time he’s jerked off without thinking about Kurt. He realizes this in the hazy, hormonal cloud after he comes and it yanks him harshly back to reality. He looks at the cool, sticky come across his stomach and thinks about how it’s too soft, too flabby. No one could love someone like him.

Kurt would never love him again. He looked so good when he saw him after Grease. He looked taller, stronger, more confident. New York agrees with him. He always knew it would.

He used to have dreams. Ambitions. He was going to move to the city, go to school, be on Broadway. He was going to buy a house with Kurt and get married and adopt two kids, a boy and a girl. He was going to be a husband, a father, and a star, and then they were going to retire and live happily ever after.

Now his dreams consist of not passing out, making it through another day without eating, and finally reaching those double digits.

Twenty pounds to go.

The rational part of him knows that he’s skinny. The websites tell him that he’s considerably underweight. He remembers being at the low end of the ‘normal’ scale to begin with, but it still feels like official recognition that he’s doing something right. He can hear the achievement unlocking in his mind when the scales roll around to 120. The numbers are going the right way.

The boy in the mirror still looks massive. Giant. He looks bigger than the grocery store scooter riders. He looks more like those people he’s seen on TV. The people they make documentaries about because they’re too big to leave the bed so they have to knock down a wall of their house and use an industrial strength winch to get them to hospital. That’s what the boy in the mirror looks like. All folds and rolls and crevices where there shouldn’t be crevices. Feet that merge into ankles that merge into blobs of leg. Giant, saggy man breasts. Four chins.

The boy in the mirror is so big that his joints couldn’t possibly support his size. The boy in the bathroom is so small that a light breeze could knock him over.

He learns how to sterilize the knife properly after one, deeper cut on his upper arm got infected. He was scared that he would have to go to the doctor, but some Neosporin and careful bandaging cleared it up. It’s not always possible to boil an army knife without his parents seeing him, so he cleans it with alcohol gel in a pinch and boils it as often as possible. He doesn’t get any more infections. He cuts when he thinks about eating, or when he eats too much. It’s a way to keep control over the thing that keeps him feeling in control.

He isn’t going to get out of Christmas. He’s going to be surrounded by food and indulgence, and there’s only going to be so much he can turn away without arousing suspicion. His grandparents are coming in from Denver and Cooper’s coming back from California. He’s changed gradually in front of his parents and hidden it well enough that they haven’t noticed anything different. But relatives he hasn’t seen for a year or more will notice. Cooper will notice.

They say he’s lost weight and he makes an excuse about senior year being so busy that he’s always running around and it’s made him lose a bit, maybe. His grandparents buy it and carry on eating their dinner and asking about his college plans, but Cooper keeps eyeing him from across the table as he swirls his meat around the plate and occasionally takes a tiny bite of carrot.

He retreats to his room as soon as possible to start playing one of his new video games. Cooper follows him a little while later and sits on the edge of the bed, watching. He feels nervous, paranoid, and eventually just turns around.

“What do you want?” he snaps, and he wishes he hadn’t.

“What’s going on, little brother?” Cooper asks in response.

“I’m trying to play a game but someone keeps looking over my shoulder.” He wishes he wasn’t so short with his brother. He’s only caring. It’s more than anyone else has done.

“This isn’t normal senior year stress. This is not eating your dinner, completely ignoring the box of your favorite chocolates, and looking like a dark-haired Olsen twin.”

“Everything is fine.”

“I’m just concerned, kid.”

“Don’t be.”

“Okay.”

He knows Cooper doesn’t believe it for a second, but his brother knows him well enough to know that pushing won’t help. Their brotherhood is still on delicate ground. He feels Cooper linger in the doorway, watching him for a final few seconds before closing the door and leaving him alone. He pauses the game and swallows hard to try to stop himself crying. The first time anyone has noticed, the first time anyone has cared, and he pushed him away. Tears spill, rolling down his face. He can feel them following the slightly hollowed line of his cheeks and running down his neck, pooling in the cavities behind his collarbones. He has to use the collar of his sweatshirt to mop the puddles up.

He spends the rest of Christmas curled inside an oversized sweater, his knees tucked up to his chest under the stretched fabric. He wears two pairs of jeans and a scarf even though the thermostat is turned up. Eventually, he has to lose the scarf because Cooper is frowning at him again, but he rearranges his sweater to cover more of his neck. He hadn’t realized how cold it gets when you’re skinny. He eats two of the chocolates, definitely still his favorites, and as soon as the clock hits nine, he excuses himself for an early night.

Seventeen pounds to go.

He hates the holidays for making him eat. He hates himself for letting Cooper get into his head. He lies down on his bed, makes three new cuts in fresh skin over his hipbone, and watches the blood gradually come out of the cuts in beads and trickle backwards, down the slope of his stomach, leaving red trails to where it pools in his belly button. Lying down, his stomach is dipped and his ribs stick out enough that he can dig his fingers in underneath them. Once the bleeding stops and the blood dries, he cleans himself up and jerks off to the beautiful, skinny boys again.

His grandparents go home the day after Christmas but Cooper has plans to stay around until New Years. His parents are thrilled that they have their perfect son home for a little while. The Hollywood son, the successful son, the straight son. They don’t say the last part but it’s heavily implied in every conversation about Cooper’s new girlfriend, in every “why can’t you be more like your brother?” He wants to argue, wants to yell and scream and say that he’s better than his brother in so many ways, but he doesn’t have the energy so he just sits there and takes it all in. Cooper keeps watching him. He doesn’t bring it up again, but he’s always watching.

On one trip back to his room from the bathroom, he overhears Cooper downstairs, telling their parents that he’s going to stick around for a little longer - he can change his flight and he doesn’t have any work booked at the moment. Their parents are thrilled but he knows it’s only because Cooper wants to keep an eye on him.

The week between Christmas and New Years has always been his least favorite week of the year. It feels like limbo, the days between celebrations where there’s nothing to do but sit around and eat leftovers. It feels grey, dull, and cold. It snows and Cooper gets excited after too long in California without his Midwestern skin so much as popping out in goosebumps. Cooper asks if he wants to go and build a snowman, but he just shrugs and goes back to his game. Cooper asks again and he eventually agrees to shut him up. He wears three sweaters, two coats, and two pairs of thermal gloves, and he’s still frozen, but rolling a giant ball of snow around in the yard with his big brother, giving him a face and clothes and a name makes him feel like a little kid for a while.

He’s so tired after the snowman that he falls asleep on the sofa while Cooper is making them cocoa. He wakes up in his bed, his coats and two of his sweaters removed, and wonders if Cooper did that. He panics when he realizes Cooper probably carried him, probably realized how light he is, and felt how thin. Cooper might have seen his scars.  
He goes to the bathroom and stands on the scales again. Fourteen pounds left. He can’t wait for life to go back to normal so he isn’t forced into sitting around the house pretending to be okay - pretending to eat - any more. It’s strange what can become normal, and how quickly. The bathroom mirror is edged with festive red tinsel and he thinks he looks ridiculous in that frame. Mirror boy hasn’t gotten much bigger. He hasn’t gotten any smaller, either. He inspects his scars to check on the healing. The three on his hip are still red and a little bit raw. He adds a couple more long cuts across his stomach and doesn’t wait for the blood to dry before he dresses again.

His parents go back to work for a couple of days before the end of the year and it makes it even harder to avoid Cooper. He’s there all the time, watching him and bringing him sandwiches for lunch. He eats the sliced ham from inside and crumbles the bread along the window ledge for the nest of redpolls living in the tree outside his window. They happily fly over to eat the crumbs and he watches as the little birds peck away, feeling like he’s done a good thing in giving them something to eat. They need it more than he does.

He politely rejects the offers of New Years parties he receives with the excuse of being tied in to a boring family event. His parents go off to a party with their colleagues, leaving him with Cooper again. The atmosphere between them is tense, but he lets Cooper make him a mug of cocoa and he sips lightly at it. Cooper offers a cookie but he waves him off and goes back to staring at Ryan Seacrest and wondering if Kurt’s there to watch the ball drop in person for the first time.

At eleven, the doorbell rings. He makes no effort to move but Cooper rushes to answer it anyway. He mutes the TV but he can only hear quiet, indistinguishable talking.

“I’m going out,” Cooper says, reappearing in the living room doorway and pulling on a coat. “Some of my old high school friends are having a party, I thought I’d go and catch up.”

“Fine,” he shrugs, his eyes not leaving the TV.

“I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up, okay?”

He nods and Cooper leaves. Ryan Seacrest is still on screen, talking about how exciting 2013 is going to be or something equally banal. It’s not going to be any different to any other year. Every other year starts with good intentions and resolutions for change, but they always end in disappointment and failure. There’s a movement in the doorway and he looks away from the TV, expecting it to be Cooper forgetting something.

“Hi.”

Kurt is standing there, tall and broad and beautiful. He unwraps his scarf from his neck, unbuttons his coat, and drapes them across the back of an armchair.

“Kurt,” he chokes. “What are you doing here?”

Kurt sits down at the other end of the couch and toes off his shoes, drawing his knees up and leaning back against the arm so he’s facing him.

“Cooper called. He’s really worried about you. He said you weren’t talking to him but he thought you might talk to me, so I got on a plane.”

“Cooper worries too much.”

“You look sick.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not eating.”

“I’m eating sometimes.”

Kurt just looks at him. He looks at him differently from Cooper. It doesn’t have the hint of condescension, the judgment, the need to be the knight in shining armor. Kurt looks at him with something like love and caring, and maybe not trust just yet but maybe something close to it.

“Sometimes isn’t enough.”

Kurt reaches out and takes his hand before he has chance to pull it away. Kurt’s hand is warm, and it feels almost like the warmth is spreading up his arm and blooming through his chest. He can’t remember when someone last held his hand.

“Cold,” Kurt says quietly. “You’re so thin.”

He meets Kurt’s eyes and his breathing falters. There’s something about it being Kurt. There’s an implicit trust there still, even after he deserved it to be broken entirely. Kurt’s probably the only person he can really talk to; the only person he’s ever really talked to.

“I’m so tired,” he confesses, and it’s like a weight is lifted from his chest. It isn’t everything going unnoticed at school. It’s not someone only caring because he feels like he has to. It’s someone who cares enough to get on a plane to come to him, even after he broke his heart and ruined everything. It’s more than he deserves.

“Blaine,” Kurt breathes. He yawns widely and Kurt tugs his arm gently until he moves up on his knees and down again the other side, nearer Kurt. “Take a nap. I’ll be here.”

He lies down, resting his head in Kurt’s lap. Kurt is warm and comforting, and he smells of lavender like he knew. He always slept better with Kurt there. Kurt’s fingers card gently through his ungelled hair and he lets himself relax for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

He panics when he wakes up but Kurt is still there, just inside the kitchen with the door wide open, making two cups of tea. Kurt sits and sips his drink, tucking his knees under his chin so his socked feet are on the sofa and waiting, ready to listen.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” he says quietly, after a few moments. “I know that, really.”

He tells Kurt about punishing himself for not being good enough. He tells Kurt about the double figures and how close he is to them, about feeding the birds instead of himself, about how he’s always cold and exhausted and he’s doing badly in school. He tells Kurt about the knife and the cuts, and lifts his sweaters to show him his thin torso, covered in scars and welts, and he cries in Kurt’s arms as he admits how much he hates himself for everything he’s done.

Kurt promises to help him get help, and it takes a while but he agrees. He thinks they’ll judge him because he’s a guy and it’s a territory dominated by girls, but he can’t go on like this and he knows that. They watch the last few minutes of the year go by on TV, leaning back against Kurt’s stomach as Kurt’s arms wrap around him. Kurt can’t seem to stop rubbing him with his hands, trying all he can to warm him up. Their ankles wrap around each other and, when the ball drops, Kurt leans down to kiss him on the temple. When he looks around at him, Kurt shrugs and says that it’s bad luck not to kiss someone at New Years. He wants to remind Kurt that neither of them really believe in fate or luck or any kind of divine intervention, but then Kurt kisses his lips lightly, not caring at all about how bad his breath has become, and he starts to think that maybe those things do exist after all.

When he goes to the bathroom, he doesn’t take off his clothes but he looks in the mirror. If he looks really hard, he can see past the giant mirror boy and begin to see his real reflection. Thin, pale, gaunt. A skeleton sheathed in broken skin. He’s taken the first step by talking about it, and he takes another tiny one by not standing on the scales before he goes back downstairs to curl up with Kurt again. He doesn’t know what they are now, if they’re anything at all. He doesn’t know if Kurt can even trust him again, but he’s sure it’ll be a conversation at some point. There are more important things, like the only person he completely trusts talking to him again. Like getting better.

It’s a new year, time for a new start. Maybe Ryan Seacrest is right after all.

It’s going to be a long road, but he’s already starting to feel like Blaine again.


End file.
